Chen Yè stood in the doorway of his assigned room and didn't move.
It was small. A bed pressed against one wall, barely large enough for his frame. A bookshelf in the corner—empty, its shelves gathering dust. A wardrobe opposite, which he already knew would contain nothing. A door to the right led to what he assumed was a bathroom.
That was it. Four walls. A ceiling. A floor that didn't leak when it rained.
It was the finest place he'd ever slept.
He stepped inside slowly, as if moving too quickly might shatter the illusion. His fingers brushed the bedframe—solid wood, not rotting planks salvaged from refuse heaps. The mattress gave slightly under his palm—actual padding, not straw stuffed into torn cloth.
There was a meal waiting on a small tray by the bed. Still warm. Steam rose from rice and vegetables, carrying a scent that made his empty stomach clench with desperate hunger.
He ate slowly, savoring each bite, forcing himself not to devour it like the starving animal he'd been for so long. When the tray was empty, he set it aside and lay back on the bed.
The ceiling stared down at him. Blank. Indifferent.
A lot has happened, he thought.
Three days ago, he'd been foraging through refuse for scraps. Two days ago, he'd been beaten bloody by guards who saw him as less than human. Yesterday, he'd stood in a hall full of stolen children while a divine existence crushed them beneath his presence and called it welcome.
And now he lay in a room with a real bed and a full stomach, waiting for a test that would determine whether he lived or died.
He should be afraid. Should be planning. Should be calculating his next move.
But exhaustion pulled at him like a tide, and for once—just this once—he let it win.
Even if it's an illusion, he thought, I'll take one night of peace.
His eyes drifted closed.
Soon, the room filled with the quiet snores of an orphan who was going to take his place in this world.
✦
In another room, far grander than Chen Yè could imagine, everything was broken.
Xīng Hé stood in the center of the destruction, her chest heaving, her lungs burning. Sweat plastered dark hair to her forehead. Her knuckles were split and bleeding, skin torn away to reveal the white gleam of bone beneath.
The bedsheets lay in ribbons around her feet. The bookshelf had been reduced to kindling, wooden shards scattered across the floor like the aftermath of an explosion. The walls—once pristine white—were smeared with crimson where she'd driven her fists into them again and again and again.
The cold composure she'd worn in the hall was gone.
In its place: fury.
Uncontained. Uncontrollable. A wildfire burning through everything she'd held back since the moment they'd dragged her through those gates.
She screamed—a raw, ragged sound that tore at her throat—and drove her foot through what remained of the bookshelf. Wood splintered. Pain lanced up her leg. She didn't care.
They took everything.
Another kick. Another crack of breaking wood.
Everything.
She knew things other children didn't.
Her family had birthed a divine existence once—centuries ago, before she was born, before her parents were born, before anyone living could remember. He had ascended with the last generation of Transcendents, leaving behind an empty seat at the family table and a library full of books no one else bothered to read.
Most of those books were dry, academic, useless.
But some of them were bedtime stories.
Xīng Hé had recognized them for what they truly were when she was five years old. Hidden knowledge, disguised as fairy tales. Lessons wrapped in metaphor. Warnings encoded in whimsy.
Being a genius had its uses.
She'd spent years decoding them. Learning the truth about divine existences. Understanding the stages, the costs, the terrible mathematics of ascension.
And that mathematics was what destroyed her now.
Mortals lived seventy to one hundred fifty years, if illness or accident didn't claim them first.
Divine existences measured time differently. An Awakened might live three centuries. An Attuned, five. Resonance, a millennium. Domain, two. Ascendant—
She didn't even know. The books hadn't said. Long enough that human lifespans became meaningless. Long enough that everyone you'd ever loved became dust and memory and forgotten names in family registries.
By her calculations, it would take her five hundred to eight hundred years to reach the Transcendent stage. That was assuming she survived the war. Assuming she advanced at a reasonable pace. Assuming everything went perfectly.
And by then?
By then, her mother would be dead. Her father, dead. Her siblings—dead. Even her baby brother, the one her mother had given birth to just one week ago, the one she'd held in her arms and promised to protect, the one whose first words she would never hear—
Dead.
Five to six generations would pass. Her family name would endure, but the faces would change. The blood would thin. By the time she broke free of this cage, the people who bore her surname would be strangers. Distant descendants who knew her only as an ancient name in their records.
The one who was drafted.
The one who never came home.
She screamed again, and this time something in her voice cracked. Blood misted from her lips. She didn't stop.
The war. That was the cruelest joke of all.
She'd found no mention of it in her ancestor's books—because it hadn't existed when he'd written them. The war had begun two decades after the last ascension, after the Transcendents had departed for higher realms and left their successors to inherit a world they no longer cared about.
Five hundred years. The war had raged for five hundred years.
And in that time, the divine existences of this world had built their system. Drafted children with potential. Fed them to the front lines. Harvested the survivors for power.
Those who reached the upper stages—Domain, Ascendant—would eventually approach Transcendence. And when they did, they would ascend, just as their predecessors had. Leave this world behind. Abandon everyone who'd fought and bled and died to get them there.
It was a cycle. A machine. And she was just another piece of fuel to be consumed.
Unless I break it.
The thought crystallized in her mind like ice forming over still water.
She had to reach Transcendent. Not in five hundred years—that was too slow. The current Transcendents would ascend within a few centuries, and when they did, their successors would take their place at the top of the food chain.
She had to beat them. Rise faster than anyone expected. Reach the peak before the current rulers departed.
And then?
Then she would tear this system apart.
Her thoughts drifted to the one who had reported her.
The officers had refused to disclose the informant's identity. At the time, she'd been too numb to press. Too shocked by the guards appearing at the shrine, by the hands grabbing her arms, by the realization that her desperate flight had ended in failure.
But now, standing in the wreckage of her room, she thought about it.
Whoever it was, they had known where she was hiding. Known what reporting her would mean. Known that by speaking those words to the authorities, they were condemning her to this—to being torn from her family, fed into the machine, trapped for centuries in a cage she couldn't escape.
Either they were stupid beyond belief—so ignorant of the world that they didn't understand what the drafting truly meant—
Or they were evil.
Cruel enough to doom a stranger's entire future for a handful of coins.
She didn't know which was worse.
But if she ever found them—
If I ever find them—
Her broken hands clenched into fists, sending fresh agony lancing up her arms. Blood dripped onto the floor, joining the stains already drying on the stone.
They will answer for it.
The rage burned for a long time.
She didn't know how long. Minutes. Hours. Time had become meaningless—just her, and the destruction, and the fire in her chest that wouldn't stop.
But eventually, even fury exhausts itself.
She stood in the center of the room, swaying slightly, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Tears streamed down her face—she hadn't even noticed when she'd started crying. Her throat felt like she'd swallowed broken glass. Her hands hung limp at her sides, shattered bones grinding against each other with every micro-movement.
And in that moment of stillness, she spoke.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just words, falling from her lips like stones dropping into deep water.
"I will stop this."
Her voice cracked. She didn't care.
"I will reach the top. I will break this system. I will make sure no one else—no one—has to feel what I feel right now."
The words hung in the air, heavy with pain, heavy with promise.
"I swear it."
She didn't notice when it began.
The blood on her hands—still wet, still warm—started to recede. Not drying. Receding. Flowing backward, up her split knuckles, into wounds that were slowly closing. Skin knit together over exposed bone. Torn flesh mended itself, fiber by fiber, as if time itself was being undone.
The bedsheets stirred.
Ribbons of fabric twitched, then slid across the floor, seeking each other. Torn edges met and fused. Wrinkles smoothed. In seconds, the sheets lay whole and pristine on the bed, as if they'd never been touched.
The bookshelf groaned.
Splinters rose from the floor like reversed rain. Shattered planks reassembled, fitting together with soft clicks. The frame straightened. Shelves reappeared. Within moments, the bookshelf stood intact in its corner—empty, but whole.
The walls breathed.
Crimson stains faded, the blood sinking into the stone and vanishing. Cracks sealed themselves. The pristine white returned, unmarked, undamaged, as if violence had never visited this room.
Reality itself was undoing.
Xīng Hé saw none of it.
Her eyes had drifted closed somewhere during the restoration, exhaustion finally claiming what rage could no longer fuel. She swayed on her feet, then crumpled—not onto the hard floor, but onto the bed that had somehow moved to catch her.
Her hands, resting on the sheets, were unmarked. Smooth. Whole.
The room around her was immaculate. Perfect. As if nothing had ever been broken.
She slept.
And in the silence of that restored room, something new stirred within her—a concept awakened, a power born of pain and fury and an unbreakable will.
She was the first natural awakener in four thousand years.
She didn't know it yet.
End of Chapter 3